


i thought that i was dreaming (when you said you loved me)

by hearttpoem



Series: finally feel like me again [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Answer: I do it later, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Fix-It of Sorts, How Do I Tag, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance do be having weird dreams, M/M, No one opens the door for a native Altean, Temporary Amnesia, girl not me writing a second amnesia fic, this is the fic ill work on to ignore my other one lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29152995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearttpoem/pseuds/hearttpoem
Summary: After being bitten by a strange creature on a foreign planet and facing some... less than desirable hallucinations because of it, Lance is sure things can only go up from there. But abnormalities on the Castle of Lions only seem to grow when it’s revealed that Prince Lotor isn’t all he’s presented himself to be, Lance struggles with his bond with the Red Lion- who’s decided to turn even more standoffish than usual- a new Altean joins the Castle’s Team, Allura struggles to cope with the guilt she faces, Shiro goes missing (again), and the man of Lance’s dreams come to life.Because, oh yeah, apparently that’s a thing- the man Lance visualized every night was a lot more real than accounted for, and now Lance has to piece together how any of this is even happening while helping the team stay afloat. And he’s sure that he can do it, he’s just not sure how exactly.But maybe this Keith guy can help.
Relationships: Allura/Romelle (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: finally feel like me again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139966
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	i thought that i was dreaming (when you said you loved me)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my gosh I’m so excited to finally be working on this fic, I’ve had it as a draft for so long but haven’t felt motivated to actually address it until now so ty to random bursts of motivation I guess.  
> Also, a little heads up:  
> a. This fic isn’t really canon compliant because I don’t really like canon lol? Lance and Keith are low key just my comfort characters, embarrassingly enough. So I haven’t really watched Voltron since the show ended. But if I miss out on any specific details that seem essential then feel free to harass me in the comments until I incorporate more of canon.  
> b. This is a second part to my first fic, ‘reminiscing of a life i had’! So if you want to read that first that’s cool, or if not that’s also cool (since that one is super long lol) You don’t need to read one first to understand the other, but there are a few references to that fic I plan to include so check it out if you care :D
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy! <3

one.

  
  


Out of all of Lance McClain-Alvarez’s faults (and do trust that there are many, though he’d likely never admit to such a thing), the hardest of all for him to deal with would definitely be his inability to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. 

Maybe it’s insomnia, or perhaps it’s just his circadian rhythm and whatnot making him an unsuspected night owl. No matter what you call it, at the end of the day (or the end of the night, he supposes) he still often struggles to actually fall into a sense of unconsciousness after closing his eyes. 

Lance, of course, wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, when he still believed in the tooth fairy and thought waking up at seven in the morning for Saturday cartoons wasn’t necessary every weekend, sleep came naturally. During sleepovers with his cousins and siblings during summers in Havana, he was always the first to pass out once his older brother Luis started singing and strumming on his rusty acoustic guitar. And after building pillow forts with his sisters in the living room amidst his adolescent years, he usually only got halfway into _Brother Bear_ or _Monster House_ before he was dozing off. However, sometime shortly after becoming a member of the Garrison’s student body and moving thousands of miles away from the only home he’d ever known, his sleep schedule went from eight hours a night of sleep to several hours of tossing and turning with a few winks of shuteye in between. Fortunately he managed to combat this more easily as he grew accustomed to the regular homesickness and change in time zones, usually by tiring himself out with homework or a comforting playlist right before bed. 

And when it was time for Lance to transition into his time as a paladin, trading his Garrison bunk for a small room that likely once belonged to a now deceased Altean crew member, he was able to battle the nightly strain on his brain by counting the glowing silicone stars he stuck to his ceiling and gripping the silent prayer that he’d find his way home sooner than later. 

But now, approximately five years into his time in space and over two months since he’d last seen Keith, the little things that helped fell way too short. Laying in a bed without the warm body he’d grown used to feeling every night was like biting into an Oreo with no filling, or sipping on lukewarm beer on a hot summer’s day. It was, to say the least, a little less than excruciating. Whereas to say the most, Lance hated every single second Keith wasn’t around. And at this point in time, he hated these moments exponentially more than usual due to the fact he had absolutely _no_ idea where the hell Keith even was. 

Lance knew he was out there _somewhere,_ despite Kolivan reporting to Team Voltron a mere three weeks ago that Keith had pretty much gone MIA and that it’d be best if they all assumed the worst. But the idea that Keith was somewhere lost in space was nothing more than a sentiment at this point, considering there was very little Lance could actually do. Not when his fellow paladins had already given up hope on finding their former teammate and no one seemed to take interest in actively searching for him. 

It hardly seemed fair- they all actively looked for one another after going through wormholes a few years back and bothered to find Shiro more recently. But now that it was time to apply that same energy to their former leader, hardly anyone saw his point of view on things. 

“Keith’s a fighter, I’m sure he’ll turn up soon,” Hunk had comforted behind closed doors after one too many arguments with Allura and Shiro. 

And Lance was sure Hunk was right on that front. Keith _was_ strong and capable of holding his own weight, plus some. He had no doubt that Keith was alive and, for the most part, well enough to find his way back to the paladins… eventually

But that didn’t make sitting around and essentially doing nothing anymore easier. Fighting sentry robots and battling Galran fleets didn’t ignite the same sense of criticality or duty when, at the back of his mind, Lance was wondering where Keith was. Not when he knew that after every encounter and skirmish, once his bayard was retired for the day and his lion was in its hangar, he’d be back to square one- pacing around and waiting. Waiting to become useful around the castle for once, waiting for everyone to hate Lotor instead of letting him reside on the castle as if he wasn’t the literal spawn of Satan, waiting for Keith to show up out of thin air. 

There was, on most days, a lot of squirming and- for Lance to be a soldier amidst a centuries old war- a lot of _nothing_. 

But at night, things somehow managed to grow worse. His throbbing head pounded louder against the hum of the castle ship’s radiators, his lids felt heavier as they blinked rapidly, but rarely heavy enough for him to actually find some peace of mind and sleep. And when he actually _did_ manage to find his way into a state of slumber, he’d be jostled awake just as quickly and find himself clutching his chest with exasperation as his heart accelerated wildly. 

Because, like everything else with Lance, there were layers to his inability to sleep. He didn’t just struggle to close his eyes at night and rest- there was also the factor of the night terrors once exhaustion finally _did_ get the best of him. 

They were often short and horribly unsweet, like skinny glasses filled with tar instead of champagne, or something equally disheartening. On nights like this, once he got his breathing to settle and he managed to shake the thought of whatever nightmare pained him from his head, he slipped out of bed with his comforter draped around his shoulders and his head hung low. 

The only person who could be of any comfort at times like this, when all armor and helmets were strung neatly in locker rooms and every paladin was behind closed doors in their chambers, wasn’t actually a person. It was the red lion. 

She’d been closed off as of late- even moreso than usual- but on most nights she was still enough of a comfort for Lance to relieve his recent stresses in the safe space that was her cockpit. It was the closest thing he had in space to a maternal ear that was always willing listen even when he didn’t have the words to express himself, and at the very least her rumbling voice and rich advice always left him feeling a lot less lonesome. 

Tonight was hardly any different. He’d suffered his usual hours of overthinking, guessing and then second guessing all the places Keith could be, before he inevitably tuckered himself out- only to be startled awake by his own disturbing visualizations. 

This time, he’d seen himself leaving Keith behind to be pretty much clobbered alive by a pack of wild skeksis, an alarmingly frightening species he’d once encountered on a planet years ago, waiting to eat them both below a shifting cliff side. Did dream Lance mean to let go of Keith’s hand and allow him to fall off that cliff? Or was it an accident? Or maybe Keith had been the one to let go… 

Lance shook his head, deciding that it didn’t matter. _They’re just dreams,_ he repeated to himself numerous times as he prepared to head towards the red lion, though the dampness gathering at his eyes was telling him otherwise. 

Sooner than later, he was climbing into the red lion’s pilot seat, knees buckled and tented upwards as he curled himself tightly into a ball in an attempt to mimic the smallness he felt. 

Lance knew he was a full-grown adult, technically old enough to drink and drive and have a house mortgage and do all the other things he’d been looking forward to doing since he was a kid- but it was nights like these that he felt particularly minuscule in the grand scheme of things. He felt young, compared to the neighboring stars just outside the castle’s walls, or even compared to the very ship he resided. Additionally, his gut, tumbling and turning with bile that threatened to make an appearance, reminded him that he was but a small speck under the microscope that was life. He knew he had an impact, on the universe and possibly the timeline of a lot more than he could imagine, but at moments such as this it was hard to fathom. Not when he ached in places that were physical and a little less than such. 

Not when the Red lion was being particularly quiet, not so much as offering light in her cockpit let alone a voice of reassurance, and he leaned back in his seat curiously, trying to stifle the sobs that wanted to push against his throat. 

Instead of questioning the Red lion’s moodiness, he opened the compartment adjacent to the pilot chair where he kept a great deal of his personal hoard. 

Over the past few weeks, since Keith’s general disappearance and especially after Kolivan admitted he had no idea where Keith even was, Lance had slowly started developing a collection of things that provided some ailment to his constantly reeling mind. 

It included old letters Keith had written him once upon a mostly forgotten time, or repurposed gifts and collectibles he’d found in Keith’s room ages ago. 

But his favorite of all was an item that he’d had a habit of holding onto for some time now- Keith’s handheld. It was a small device that Pidge had given Keith all the way back when he’d originally joined the blade of Mamora, but since Keith often forgot it at the Castle of Lions during his fleeting visits, it could easily be found in Lance’s possession if not Keith’s. 

And you’d think that in most instances Lance would make haste in returning the small gadget- it was essentially the only personal communication device that Keith had. But Lance had made a habit of taking pictures on Keith’s phone and writing short messages or making playlists in the apps as small gestures for Keith to find at some point in the future. So much so that, at times, Lance spent more time on the handheld than Keith even did. 

And now, months since Keith had last accidentally left the phone in Lance’s possession, the orange chipped device sat in Lance’s calloused hands feeling smaller and older than ever. Not too long ago it was something that gave Lance a thrill, because him having it meant he could leave but another thing for his favorite person to find- whether that be a poem in the notes app, or a list of songs that reminded Lance of Keith in the music application Pidge had revived for the paladins, or even just a few selfies. It didn’t matter what Lance actually did- he knew Keith would at the end of the day appreciate it, no matter how much he complained about his phone being impossible to find on most occasions thanks to Lance. And that’s what made all his attempts to make Keith smile worthwhile. 

However, those sentiments tasted salty now that tables had turned and he couldn’t be sure Keith would ever find any of the things he’d recently left on the phone. Months ago, before anyone knew Keith was missing, he’d written a short letter about what he did while waiting for Keith to visit again. And then, when Keith missed his usual routine visit Lance added onto that paragraph and typed up a few run-on, adjective-littered sentences describing how nervous it made Lance feel when Keith went on long missions. By the third week, with Keith completely gone without a trace, Lance had typed up several paragraphs every night Keith was gone and the original topic had been lost in a cesspool of worrisome metaphors and pleas for Keith to come home. 

Lance was talking to the wind, obviously; it’s not like Keith had some telepathic connection to the outdated handheld and could read everything Lance was writing in the notes app. But it was a much needed stress reliever that gave Lance something to do when he itched to go searching past every crater and under every meteor for the person who no one seemed to miss half as much as he did. 

And at times, when everyone was presumably fast asleep and sitting under the red hue of the Red Lion’s cockpit wasn’t enough, Lance did do perimeter sweeps. He’d ride as far out as the Red Lion would be willing to go, circling back around to the castle to constantly turn up empty handed. And it was frustrating, for apparent reasons, that he could push all the limits of his lion- piloting at fearsome hours with a dreary mind- and find nothing or no one. Not that he expected to find much. This _was_ Keith after all- if he was anywhere nearby he’d likely find his way to the team before they’d find him. Things were often done on Keith’s terms or not at all. 

But it was the attempt that counted; Lance would rather try and fail a million times rather than never try at all. But it was that same course of action that left him feeling helpless and frustrated. 

So, knowing that any attempts would likely be fruitless, he didn’t bother going out riding tonight. Instead, he flipped through Keith’s handheld and typed out what he’d seen in his nightmare and all the feelings that came with it, trying to shed the burdensome ache he’d been feeling. He typed until his thumbs were sore, and before long found himself scrolling through the pictures in Keith’s phone. Most were of him, somehow ironically, but a few were of Keith. His Keith. The face he’d been waiting to see day in and day out. 

His fingers grew numb, gripping the orange plastic in an awkward position and squinting at the glowing screen with heavy, glazed over eyes, and he ended up settling on one picture for several minutes. It was a more recent photo, one of the first the pair had taken since Keith and Lance had… started dating? That entire notion still left knots in Lance’s stomach, along with an uneasy dose of butterflies that were much too hard to process while sleep deprived. So instead Lance digested the picture for the way it was- just a simply, slightly blurred snapshot of Lance resting his head against Keith’s chest sometime early in the morning. 

It’s such a Keith thing to want to capture, and the poor photography skills- between the awkward angle and incomprehensibility of half the photo- have Kogane written all over it. And yet, somehow, in the dead of night when Lance is already at wit’s end, this comes off as just endearing enough to make him miss Keith tenfold somehow. It’s enough to make Lance stare at the picture for ages, and it’s the last thing he sees before he finally manages to fall asleep again.

  
  


\- -

  
  


The next time Lance awakes, coming to a state of consciousness abruptly like a balloon popping or the drop of hat rather than gradually and gracefully, he feels a crick in his neck and a dry cough forming in his chest.

He clears his throat, rubbing at his eyes to gather his surroundings, before guessing with a resigned sigh that it’s likely morning by now and that he’d best start his day. The last time he’d come to team training late Shiro had practically bit his head off, and Lance didn’t think he could stand someone yelling at him right then. Not after the night he’s had. 

However, as he trudges into the ship’s kitchen for a glass of water, he comes to realize that the castle is still in its night cycle. He’s grateful for this, at least, with the expectation that he’ll have a few hours alone to gather himself. 

Lance was never one for being alone- he constantly felt as though empty spaces needed to be filled, both physically and verbally to keep his greatest anxieties and shortcomings at bay. But he’d been feeling an indescribable amount of isolation between himself and the remaining members of Voltron. Nearly to the point where he began to wish that he could abandon his duties as a paladin completely and simply return home. 

He was constantly amidst the inner turmoil that he’d felt during his first year as the blue paladin- an unnerving amount of homesickness and general anxiety about the unknown, alongside a surplus of wishes for some form of normality and familiarity. Years had passed since then, but even now with the added experience and wisdom, and his blue lion traded in for red, the feelings were still there. And now that Keith was gone, with practically no one half as concerned as he was, it was multiplied with a new layer of vexation he didn’t even know he was capable of possessing. 

In moments like this, where it felt as though not a soul in the universe could understand the level of mystery he was facing, the best thing he could manage to do for himself was slink to the kitchen and hope he doesn’t manage to wake someone up along the way. He loved his teammates, he really did- but the time alone to recollect himself was much needed if he was expected to go another day pretending everything was fine. 

Not that he ever really gets to find that peace of mind. 

Inside the kitchen, after he’s managed to pour himself a glass of water (or the closest thing to it this far into space) and he’s finally starting to feel his nerves settle, he’s caught off guard by a voice that’s unnerving enough to disturb Dracula or something equally frightening. 

“A bit early to be starting the day, no?” Lance hears, nearly causing him to choke on his water and whips around to stare accusingly at the owner of the voice, knowing who it is before he’s even turned around. 

“A bit early for you to already be in my business,” Lance retorts, frowning in Lotor’s direction without actually ever meeting his gaze. 

The guy was disconcerting, to say the least. And completely, undoubtedly, under every single circumstance, _agitating_ to say a bit more. There were the small fangs that dared to poke through at the quip of every smirk (and boy did he smirk far too often for a guy that had recently murdered his own father), the slanted eyes that shifted and examined everything and nothing all at once, constantly taking people in with swift up-down motions as if to assess a new target, and then of course there was the onslaught of endless white split ends. These were all just the small tidbits that caused Lotor to rub Lance the work great way; never mind the never-ending list of war crimes the Galran prince had committed. 

Whether or not Lotor was worth forgiving after playing a nerve wrecking game of cat-and-mouse with team Voltron before eventually declaring himself an ally and joining the team was apparently not up to Lance. Allura had made that abundantly clear during the times in which she chose to defend Lotor, and even cater to his every need as though he’d never wronged her or anyone else in the slightest. But that didn’t mean Lance had to be happy about Lotor perching himself in Allura’s corner like one of the castle mice as if he’d always been around. And Lance especially didn’t have to take kindly to the nuisance sitting at the kitchen island, daintily holding onto a small mug as if he was having tea with the queen rather than an early morning drink in the dark. 

“You know, I’ve never quite understood your disdain for me. If I’ve offended you in any way, I apologize,” Lotor says slowly with a slight frown, because nothing he ever does is full and surefire. It’s always light dashes of this and half-genuine half-mischievous bits of that. It’s one of the many, _many_ things Lance hates about the damned guy.

“Yeah, I’ll just forgive you for all the accounts of attempted murder, no biggie. Let bygones be bygones right?” Lance huffs, rolling his eyes.

“Exactly,” Lotor smiles, because apparently aliens aren’t that great with sarcasm, and it only irritates Lance more. He figures there’s no use talking to someone who he wants nothing to do with, and is on his way to tossing his cup into the sink when Lotor stops him. “By the way… I don’t mean any harm by this, however you seem as though you’ve seen better days lately. Is there anything in particular that’s troubling you? I’ve learned from your team that talking about these things actually helps quite a bit…” 

For once, Lotor’s usual cunning grin completely rides off of his features and is replaced with downcast eyes and a miserable frown. It makes Lance curious, admittedly, to see Lotor upset for once. Enough so that he pauses in his steps and stares for a second; but _only_ for a second.

“Yeah, not falling for your little facade, Low tide. You can fool everyone else here, but I’m not so quick to forget all the shit you’ve put this team through.” Lance crosses his arms, willing himself to turn around and storm off like he initially intended, but for some reason he can’t. For some reason Lotor’s glowing yellow scleras have caught onto his white ones and he can’t look away. For some reason, he can’t get himself to move when this is the first time someone’s actually stopped to ask how he’s feeling in what feels like forever. 

“Red paladin, I know not how to earn your trust but I must assure you I mean no harm, especially not in my lounge wear,” Lotor forces a shy grin, pinning a sorry tendril of hair behind one of his ears. At a second glance, Lance figured he probably wasn’t lying. For the very first time, Lance was actually seeing Lotor in his pajamas- a purple and pink fleece set not unlike Lance’s own. He even had his haired tied back for once, in a low ponytail that almost made his white mane seem bearable. “I just wanted to extend to you the same kindness team Voltron has shown me. You lot have shown me that it’s your inner frustrations are important to tend to, and a little attention goes a long way. So I’m willing to provide that if you’d like…” 

Lotor speaks so nonchalantly, talking between sips of his drink and tilting his head sideways and then tucking stray hairs backwards, that Lance gets a bit caught up in it all. There’s that deep down gut feeling that there’s hardly any validity in his words and that these reassurances don’t go very far. But those deep down feelings stay just there- deep down; buried and tucked so far away that it allows leeway for Lance to take interest in these extended sentiments. So he turns sideways, arms uncrossing slowly, and he presses his lips together before sighing. 

“I doubt you’d even understand what’s going on,” Lance says, more to himself that to Lotor, mostly in an attempt to get himself to finally turn around and ignore the itch he has to finally talk to _someone_ for once. Even if said someone was Lotor of all people.

“The mishap regarding your former leader is what ails you, no?” Lotor tries, hitting the nail right on the head and it’s enough to push Lance back into his defenses. 

“What do _you_ know about Keith?” he snaps, thin brows furrowed into the trenches of his forehead while Lotor sits idly at the table in deep contrast.

“Nothing,” Lotor answers, causing the red paladin to relax slightly. “No one offers me intel on much of anything around here.”

“I wonder why,” Lance snorts, his shoulders loosening in increments until he feels himself plopping into the seat adjacent to the Galran royalty. 

“Yes, I wonder as well,” Lotor agrees, still missing Lance’s subtexts of sarcasm, before grasping his mug by both hands and shrugging. “However, Allura has mentioned in passing that you may come off as… _impartial_ at times because you miss him dearly and your anger is misdirected. Were you two close?”

“You could say that,” Lance sighs, resting his chin against the pad of his palm and theorizing what other details about his life Allura might be sharing against his will. He knew that Allura was a bit of gossip, but he’d assumed he’d be the exception considering she usually was gossiping with _Lance._ But then again, nothing had been as per usual since Lotor took board in their humble abode. 

“So, I suppose I see the source of your plight. You’re irritable because he’s gone,” Lotor pieces together obnoxiously, and Lance throws him an irritated glance. 

“He’s not _gone._ I just… don’t know where he is. And no one seems to want to find him either which is crazy because he’d be checking every goddamn asteroid and solar system if any one of _us_ were missing. But it’s like all anyone cares about lately is trying to deal with the entire heir of the Glaran throne thing which I get is a big deal but, like, _hello_ multitasking exists for a reason! It’s like everyone thinks he’s _dead_ or something and he’s- well he’s not. He can’t be…” 

“Why not?” Lotor questions, likely with genuine confusion considering he probably little to nothing regarding the ongoing Keith situation, but Lance couldn’t help but suddenly feel himself going cold with shock and a wall of fortification. He’d been too caught up in his own words, he’d practically forgotten who he was talking to in the first place. Now, staring into the unwelcoming abrasive eyes of a part time prince and part time warrior made him feel… off kilter. 

“He just isn’t, okay?” Lance sighs, looking away to focus his eyes on the kitchen island’s tabletop as though the flat surface was anything worth noting. 

“Well, as you may have guessed I can offer very little assistance on that front,” Lotor starts, the trepidation coursing through the tone in his voice so out of character that Lance nearly gets the urge to scoot his chair away. “But I wish you the best in the search for your paladin.” 

_My paladin,_ Lance notes, feeling a sudden queasiness as his intestines begin to do somersaults. It felt odd to hear, though he knew to some extent it was true. But during moments like this- during odd hours where it was too early to be awake but too late to go to sleep, in a kitchen under dim lighting and under the impression of sleep deprivation- the sentiment felt out of place. The thought of Keith belonging to him, in any way at all, came with the notion that there was a bit of the former of black paladin that was capable of being given away. And how was that so when the idea that Keith could be dead was _also_ in the air? You can’t belong to someone if you’re not even around to be given away in the first place, can you?

It’s an unsettling thought, albeit a thought that only existed due to Lance’s ability to overthink until he nearly made himself sick, and he ran a finger over the place where his always-present necklace sat around his neck, tucked under his shirt. 

Where he got the necklace- a chain bearing a ring with a red and blue jewel, alongside a small pearl- made him ache even more than he had previously and he tried to shake the uncomfortableness he was feeling by refocusing onto something else. 

“What are you drinking?” Lance asks, just asking to redirect the conversation, and it seems to genuinely catch the man next to him by surprise. 

“Oh, this?” Lotor says, shaking his cup and then taking a swig. “Er, it’s nothing.”

“Elusive much?” Lance retorts, finding himself genuinely intrigued now that Lotor was being so cagey. 

“It’s just… a little something I drink when I want to, um, forget.” 

“What are you trying to forget?” Lance inquires, frown deepening and Lotor snorts. 

“I’m sure we both are well aware of the fact that I don’t have the most respectable past,” Lotor answers, a small sneer forcing its way onto his face.

“Well at least you’re self aware…,” Lance comments, eyes scanning Lotor’s face as it manages to be glazed with a sense of regret and perhaps something a little darker. Dark eyes become overshadowed with a faraway look, and Lance wonders what it is that Lotor’s thoughts have likely traveled to, only for it to occur to him that whatever unfortunate memories Lotor might have are likely much darker than Lance could even imagine. 

“I don’t know how obvious it may be,” Lotor begins, once he’s seemed to gather himself after a beat. “But certain aspects of my upbringing… left a bit much to be desired. Which I suppose is why I have a tendency to make so many mistakes. Which is why drinks like this-” he pauses to hold up his mug and shake it gently, and ignores Lance snorting at him calling his literal malefactions ‘mistakes’, “make things a bit easier on my mind.”

“Is it stronger than nunvill?” Lance asks, slowly taking a hint. (Whether or not it was the _right_ hint that Lotor was actually trying to make is debatable.)

“It’s stronger than a lot of things.” Lotor nods, and Lance quickly hands over his cup.

“In that case, I’ll take a shot.”

“Oh, I- are you sure? You really want to forget?” Lotor asks, appearing perplexed, and Lance returns the confusion.

“If _forgetting_ as you like to call it will help me get through another day without Keith, then sure. Why not?” 

Lotor stares at Lance oddly for a minute, face unguarded but unreadable, before disappearing into the kitchen for a few minutes only to return with a tall vial capped with a cork. Lance finds the choice of bottling a bit strange, but doesn’t offer any questions as Lotor pours a bit into his glass. Nor does he hesitate to drink it all in one gulp immediately after.

“Oh… you’re supposed to dilute it,” Lotor informs, looking slightly horrified at Lance’s apparent drinking habits. 

“Is that why it tastes so bad?” Lance grunts, smacking his lips a few times to get the flavor of what tasted like raw vanilla extract off of his tongue. 

“Something like that,” Lotor says, eyes shifting, and Lance doesn’t get to question this further as the castle’s lights begin to shift from their night cycle to the early morning illumination. “Well, that’s my cue to leave. It was nice talking to you, Red paladin.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Lance replies, watching as Lotor drops his cup into the kitchen sink on his way out and takes his leave. It’s strange, he thinks, to wordlessly watch someone he supposedly hates walk away. 

And it’s even stranger that, long after Lotor has slithered off to some other corner of the castle, Lance is left staring into the empty bottom of his cup to see his own waning and flickering reflection, corners of his face interrupted by the dull light and the remaining dredges of his drink. He stares and stares, looking at his own sullen face, but his mind is focused everywhere _but_ himself. All he can do is think of Keith, and he hates that that’s _all_ he’s done for weeks. And here he is, supposed to be _forgetting_. It’s so queer to him that Keith has imprinted himself to Lance’s life, like stubborn chewing gum that’s knotted and dried up at the bottom of your shoe or in your hair. Even with Keith not physically being there- he lived in Lance’s mind at the Garrison, before they were even properly acquainted and then long after Keith had left, and now life was repeating itself. Lance had no idea where the hell Keith was, and he felt as though he was the only person who even seemed to care. 

But nothing’s quite as odd as the cold sensation he feels emptying into his chest, pooling around his insides until all of him feels swarmed in a sense of icy isolation. 

\- -

The following morning, Lance is sure he’s suffering the worst hangover he’s ever been forced to endure. 

Well, _technically_ it isn’t the following the morning- it’s just a few hours after his short interaction with Lotor. And as far as hangovers go, he hasn’t had many considering he can hold his liquor (mostly) and hasn’t drank much in the past to begin with (assuming stolen sips of this and that on holidays as a kid don’t count). 

Lance vaguely recalls Lotor mentioning that whatever he chugged down was supposed to be diluted, and he curses himself for being a little too eager to trust Lotor of all people just because he was feeling a little desperate. 

For half a second, he thinks of the possibility of Lotor poisoning him as some sort of secret mission to take out the paladins one by one, but doesn’t get the chance to consider it for very long before he’s being called to the flight deck over the intercoms. 

The deafening sound of Allura’s voice, clear as day calling the paladins to report for their daily missions triggers his already ongoing headache enough for him to focus on that for the time being, and he rushes from his room to the observation deck to avoid the risk of having to hear the ear-splitting static of the intercoms again. 

“Lance, nice to see you,” Allura greets upon his arrival, already in her paladin armor and holding her tablet, scrolling so diligently that Lance wonders how she even knew it was him that had entered the room considering her eyes were glued to her screen. And, of course, Lotor was hovering nearby, looming over her shoulder like some sort of storm cloud that only seemed to bother Lance. And just to add to the preexisting uneasiness that’s settled under his skin, Lotor flashes him one of his rarer grins, fangs flaring just long enough that it sets Lance off. 

He isn’t sure how to react, assuming he’s supposed to react at all, so he simply makes haste to look away and slide into a comfortable spot standing behind Hunk, who’s amidst some sidebar conversation with Pidge and Coran. 

But he still feels put off even after Shiro has run through their daily tasks and assigned missions for each paladin, squaring them off into pairs and dismissing them to head to their lions and reconvene later at the end of the day.

“You’re oddly quiet,” Pidge observes after boarding Lance’s lion with him, with their mission being a simple supply load on an abandoned island that apparently would take a few vargas tops. 

“Sorry?” Lance mutters, his own voice causing his head to ache even more, and he sets Red to autopilot after he’s flown her outside her hangar and pushed in the necessary coordinates for their destination. 

“No need to apologize just- is something going on? Ya know, other than the obvious?” Pidge asks, fiddling with her handheld, no doubt texting Hunk, but her voice just low enough to mirror genuine concern. 

_The obvious? What the hell was the obvious?_

Lance was usually self-conscious enough to be able to account for most elephants in the room, assuming that were actually regarding him, but apparently not in this instance. He had the fuzzy feeling that he should probably know what it was Pidge was talking about, especially when she took the time to turn off her phone and glance in his direction when he failed to answer her within a normal timeframe. But then again, he got that stationary numbness along the edges of his brain practically ever time he spoke to Pidge- she _was_ significantly smarter than him after all. Most days he had no idea what she was referring to, and today was seemingly no different. 

“Um, I’m fine, Pidgeon. Just a little headache is all,” Lance clarifies after deciding that overthinking Pidge’s references served a mute point, and dug through one of Red’s storage compartments in search for a few painkillers. 

“You sure? You didn’t make like a single pop culture reference when Shiro was going over our missions. Allura even mentioned crystals which I feel like you easily could’ve tied into a crystal meth joke,” Pidge insists, adjusting her glasses slightly as her eyebrows coin into a knot, and Lance shakes his head. 

“As much as I love to talk about _Breaking Bad_ as much as the next person, I’m just not in the mood, kiddo,” is the best he can do for a response, eventually finding a small box full of capsules that’ll alleviate whatever stress that’s working on his frontal lobes. “Besides… TV references don’t really go over all that well with aliens that don’t have access to Netflix, anyway.” 

This seems to satisfy Pidge for the time being, though Lance knows from the way she scrunches her nose upward and all ends of her face twist awkwardly, she’s not exactly happy with his answer. But he can’t exactly bother to give her the time of day, either. There’s a mission he has to deal with on one hand, and a very persistent hangover he’s struggling with on the other, and it’s a lot to deal with at essentially seven in the morning. 

So instead of mulling over Pidge’s questions for any longer than necessary, he dry swallows two painkillers and spends the remainder of the ride going over the intel Allura had sent to his tablet regarding his ongoing mission.

On the flight deck, Lance hadn’t actually been able to pay much attention to anything- he’d been too busy trying to focus. Which, without context, makes little to no sense, but of course Lance- diagnosed with ADHD at the age of twelve, undiagnosed with some sort of PTSD and anxiety he was probably suffering from his time as a space cadet turned intergalactic warrior- was able to turn even the simplest of meetings into a force to be reckoned with for his mind. 

Everything had came across much too loud- the scuffing of Hunk’s boots, the scratching of Coran’s stylus into his data pad as he shifted his mustache back and forth, the squeak of the space mice as they protruded out of one of Pidge’s pockets, seemingly fighting over a cereal bar she must’ve fed them that morning. It was a bit of a sensory overload, endorsed by the neverending thrum of Lance’s nervous system and a lack of sleep. It wasn’t a good look- being sleep deprived, hungover, hungry, and facing some sort of weird chemical imbalance somewhere or the other in your body that made your heart beat off tempo and the liquid behind your eyes threaten to flood your face. 

And yet, that’s what Lance was facing, and doing his _best_ to bite down. He tried to ignore the squeaking and the creaking, the scruffing and the muffling, the scratching and etching and thrumming and everything else that _wasn’t_ Shiro or Allura or Coran offering updates. However, by the time his head was finally settled- not necessarily at peace but just level enough to possibly comprehend what Lance was hearing if he strained his mind enough- the quick congregation was over. 

Hunk and Shiro were making their way to the locker rooms, Lotor and Allura were headed in the opposite direction, and Pidge was staring up at Lance expectantly. 

Now, in Red’s cockpit, Lance was forced to play a quick game of catch-up to find out what he’d missed while he was so busy trying to strain his brain for a single available cell. And it was fitting, oddly enough. There were very few days where Lance wasn’t two steps behind, trying to fill in shoes that were just a few sizes too big by layering metaphorical socks and clenching at the heels. So at the very best, at least he wasn’t entirely out of character at the moment. 

And at least he hadn’t really missed much, as far as he could tell. Allura had sent him the details of his mission, and it really was a bit of a touch and go supply load. Pidge and Lance were to be on the lookout for a small grove of mushrooms, ones with a pointed peak that looked like some sort of funny hat and a plump stem that supposedly held powerful crystals inside. 

What the crystals could be used for, Allura hadn’t bothered to include, but he assumed it’d be something small scale and simple. Thus making the intensity of the mission even less weighted, and Lance leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. Maybe he’d be able to relax soon enough. 

\- -

As it turned out, Allura hadn’t included much information at all. And as much as Lance would’ve liked to complain, he couldn’t be sure she hadn’t given him a heads up when he hadn’t been listening to her earlier in the first place. So he left all the complaining to Pidge instead. 

“I can’t believe Hunk and Shiro get to have some action killing sentries and shit, while we’re stuck wading through Shrek’s swamp. It’s probably going to take forever to properly clean my suit!” Pidge explained after several minutes into their search for the mushrooms, angrily wading through muddy swamp puddles and vines that reached past her ankles. 

Lance and Pidge had only been walking for a maximum of twenty minutes tops, but they’d both worked up a sweat that covered their necks and foreheads in heavy beads that dripped down to the lining of their suits, and Pidge had passed her mostly empty backpack to Lance in an attempt to make the heat a little less tiresome. It apparently didn’t work, because she was still petulantly expressing enough of her discontent for the both of them. Not that Lance could exactly blame her. 

While Allura had been right about the planet they were to scour through- Farisia, more modernly known as the overgrown and empty Sector XZ626 in the Guratian solar system, being an island, she hadn’t clarified that it was by no means tropical. It was only an island at all by technicality, because half of the planet’s lush greenery had been swallowed by its surplus of muddled water (assuming that the brown liquid they saw _was_ actually mud). All that remained otherwise was the plot of land on the far corner of the planet, steep enough to keep the deeper trenches of the mud at bay and harboring rocky forests. But in simpler terms, it was a swamp. A dirty, muddy, stinky, swamp. And between the excess of annoying, itchy wildlife and the two suns beating down on both of the paladins, it was no wonder that the planet was abandoned by any notable creatures. 

Or so Lance thought. 

After an hour of Lance hacking through stubborn leaves and dead trees to make a path through the swamp with his bayard’s sword, Pidge complaining up to ears, and a record-breaking amount of sweating, Lance was a bit frustrated. 

Not necessarily with the green paladin, or even with the godforsaken planet, but just at this mission and their inability to find the stupid mushroom grove which- according to the map allura had sent- could be any of the several places plotted on the map, despite the island having limited space. 

“Alright,” Lance heaves rather than says, tongue dry enough that he decides he would rather risk airborne poison from being on a mostly foreign planet than wear the upper half of his suit any longer. “Why don’t we split up to find them? We’ll cover more ground that way.” 

“Whatever,” Pidge answers after a beat, taking off her helmet that by now is creating its own biome with the sweaty condensation, and sooner than later they’re headed in opposite directions. 

Lance assumes this should be fine, because it can’t possibly be that that hard to find a couple mushrooms could it? Worst case scenario was one of the paladins fail to forgo heat stroke and Allura wouldn’t be able to have her weird little fungus crystals, and best case scenario was they found the patch of shrooms sooner than later and were able to take long, cold showers after a debriefing meeting. 

But there was a list of things that Lance hadn’t accounted for. Albeit a short list, but a list all the same. 

  1. The painkillers Lance had taken apparently weren’t strong enough to work through whatever monster migraine he was suffering- at least not for long. Because just as he was starting to feel like he wasn’t on the edge of a skull implosion, and he was thinking the mission was actually manageable, that familiar throb was making a U-turn.
  2. Said headache made it a whole lot harder to grasp his surroundings, so when a thick cloud of fog came seemingly out of nowhere, he was both blindsided and essentially blind sided. 
  3. Lance _was_ able to find the grove, but apparently he had company as well. 



After a few minutes of stumbling through the fog that had randomly appeared and stubbornly settled at the base floor of the swamp, creating a thick juniper green haze that looked annoyingly similar to a cartoonish fart cloud, Lance managed to contact Pidge over comms to decide their next move. 

“I headed far west and I don’t see anything over here, so unless you think climbing these cliffs will be worth it I’m coming back around,” Pidge explains after Lance gives her an updated, struggling to hold his helmet’s speaker close enough to his ear while continuing to hack through the fog. 

“Then I’ll head east and meet you there. But if we don’t find anything after that I think we should just call it quits,” Lance says into his helmet speaker, upper lip twitching as sweat rolls from his Cupid’s bow. The humidity was admittedly getting to him, and there was no way that those gems could be worth the dehydration or worse if they didn’t make their way back to the Red lion soon. 

“Got it, see you soon,” Pidge says before her line fizzes out into the abyss of the overgrown swamp, and Lance is left wishing he had a proper breakfast. Or that he had some really strong Advil. Or pizza or garlic knots; maybe both. Or-

Lance’s wishful train of thought is abruptly cut off as he comes into a fresh clearing, the fog finally dissipating, and he sighs a breath of fresh air upon finally being able to see clearly. And lo and behold, amongst the clearing was Allura’s stupid plants. 

After checking his tablet to make sure that he had actually reached one of the designated areas Allura had circled on the map she provided, and that the physical description of the fungi matched, he updated Pidge and began to slowly uproot the soil before packing and loading the plants. With the ground already being moist, it was fairly easy to deroot and package the plants into small pots and plastic casings, until eventually storing them into the backpack he was carrying. 

It was halfway into this makeshift gardening, with Lance making sure to move quickly in hopes to get back to the castle as soon as possible, that he heard the familiar rustle of foliage somewhere slightly distant. After snapping his head up instinctively, and coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t Pidge, he half-stands and he’d fully reaches for his bayard. 

Lance is on his way to properly standing and doing a perimeter check, when he sees a small beast coming into the clearing, eyeing him just as dubiously as Lance watched it. 

“Um, hi…,” Lance attempted, feeling slightly ridiculous as he took note of the animal’s physical appearance- a small, pale gray critter that was likely no taller than his knees at its full height, bearing a fuzzy mop of hair that mimicked moss and similar nature amongst the swamp. The closest thing Lance could compare it to was a wetland kitten- or maybe a fish crossbred with a tree and arachnid? Lance didn’t have a clue what it was, but he still had a mission at hand so he decided to put his faith in this thing and hoped for the best. “Don’t mind me, just getting some mushrooms and then I’ll be on my way.” 

Lance felt vaguely wary at it eyed him vicariously with its bleak black eyes, and approached slowly- pausing in intervals to sniff the ground or run its flat paw through some mud- so Lance tried to work as quickly as possible to avoid any altercations. 

But the creature seemed to have other ideas; depending on what one might consider an altercation. 

“I’m leaving, I promise,” Lance says once the animal is fully in his presence, packing a handful of mushrooms in his bag at a time rather than one by one as he’d done earlier. “No need to get all up in my business.”

Clearly this- this _thing_ doesn’t speak English because instead of taking any heed of Lance’s words, it butts its head into his shoulder once, and then rests its head in his lap. Just like that. 

“Oh-,” Lance whispers upon this development because, well, what else is there to be said? “You must not have any natural predators. Do you know who I am? I’m, like, a paladin of Voltron- do you know how many Galran soldiers I’ve taken out? I am _extremely_ deadly, sir. Or ma’am. Do you have pronouns? What even _are_ you?” 

Lance doesn’t get much of an answer to his babbling, rather than a head that’s further nestled into his lap, and he sighs in resignation. Admittedly, he had likely gathered enough to satisfy Allura and he could definitely use the break while waiting on Pidge. So instead of putting up a fight, he drops the mushroom in his hand in turn for making an attempt to pet whatever it is that’s made his legs into a pillow. 

“So, what’s your deal? Do you just make a habit of sitting on people?” Lance questions, for the first time in hours being able to focus on something other than his headache and the overpour of sweat raining down from his face. As expected, the creature doesn’t grace him with so much as a snort or a snuffle- but rather inhales the mushroom in his hand and swallows it in one gulp. “Okay- well, that’s um. I was never much of a mushroom person but to each their own. Let me guess, you main as Toad in Mario Kart?” 

Evidently bad jokes aren’t appreciated, because the slimy yellow bandit’s next move is to rummage through Lance’s backpack from where it’s laying on the ground, likely in search of more mushrooms. 

“Hey, weirdo, those are for Allura.” 

Much to the animal’s chagrin, Lance removes it from his bag and attempts to set it aside, ready to now leave and search for the green paladin, but manages to get bitten through his glove in the process by sharp pincers that seemingly weren’t there two seconds prior. 

The bite itself isn’t the worst thing he suffered, but the strange tingling he feels in his hand immediately afterward, followed by a sharp sting, annoys him enough to shoo off the creature and stand, irritated. 

“Stupid swamp cat...pig...spider thing,” Lance mutters, walking back the way he came, through the green mist and trying to get ahold of Pidge over comms. He can feel the irritated flesh in his hand suffering what’s no doubt inflammation, and he wonders if he probably should’ve scanned that weird varmint before telling it to kick rocks. 

“What the hell happened to your hand?” Pidge pries once they’ve met up somewhere in the middle, not far from where they started, and Lance checks back in with his hand to see it’s completely swollen at the points where he was impaled, skin threatening to burst through his gloves. 

“Um… something... bit me. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt too… bad,” Lance drawls, and goes to dig through his bag in search for the water he’s been making his way through all day. Within the past couple minutes his head had only been hurting increasingly more, and the stiupid island appeared to finally be getting the best of him because at this point his head was entirely swimming. 

“Let’s get you back to the castle,” Pidge rushes, her large owlish eyes blurry behind her fogged up glasses, and Lance summises, eerily enough, she reminds him of his sister under this odd yellow lighting. And in the next second, he’s out. 

\- -

“Hey, just a heads up, but maybe _don’t_ get all friendly with whatever strange creature walks up to you,” Pidge complains for the umpteenth time the following day. It’s been a little under twenty-four hours since he was last on Farisia, and not even eight hours since Lance was last in a healing pod recovering from _whatever_ toxins his body likely suffered from the strange bite he endured, but Pidge still wasn’t letting him breathe. Whether that was relatively speaking, with her crowding around his pod and then his bed, or in terms of letting him get a word in to defend himself regarding the situation, Lance can’t say. Or maybe he’d say both, because she _had_ been a bit much in the past couple of hours. Especially for Pidge, who hardly ever came off as overbearing of all things. 

But he couldn’t exactly complain. He knew she was just worried. About his injury, considering that his hand had slightly healed but was still swollen, even with the unnecessarily long time under remedial care. And a bit further than that as well. 

“She’s just freaked, man,” Hunk had explained in between Pidge’s rants, after she had temporarily excused herself from Lance’s bedroom to go to the bathroom. “She’s got a funny way of showing it, but it’s never easy seeing one of us hurt, even a little bit. Especially when it’s her job to get us back to safety. Especially when it’s… ya know, you.” 

“I know,” Lance sighed, biting his lip as he stared into the still warm soup that Hunk had brought him. Because he _did_ know. After half a decade as a paladin, and a little longer as Pidge’s friend, he was aware that he reminded her of Matt. Even after they’d actually found Matthew amongst the outskirts of the rebel groups, she still managed to offhandedly call Lance ‘Matt’ on occasion. He was more than well aware of how much she appreciated their sibling dynamic, almost needing it at some points to get her through the harder days as a premature soldier amongst comets and wars older than half of their ancestry line. 

So instead of telling Pidge to shove off and stop nagging, Lance sighs and lets her inspect his wound for the umpteenth time in the medbay. And complain. _Alot._

“In my defense, it just sat in my lap. What was I supposed to do? I’m not trying to get PETA called on my ass,” Lance attempts, biting at his already worn lip after such a long past few days and Pidge rolls her eyes at him. 

“Right, because intergalactic PETA is a thing.”

“Don’t they actually test on animals or something?” Hunk butts in, watching as Pidge does her best to wrap his hand in fresh gauze. 

“Who cares?” she dismisses, covering the gauze in ointment and then adding a new bandage. “My point is, you need to take better care of yourself. Or at the very least, if you’re gonna get poisoned by a swamp monster, don’t do it on my watch. I’m so not trying to have Keith on my case when he comes back.” 

“ _Pidge_ ,” Hunk hisses, and Pidge’s face curls into a frown that’s specially reserved for only the prickliest of her forms of annoyance. 

“What? I’m tired of walking on eggshells and acting like he doesn’t exist just cause he’s gone AWOL. If Shiro can dip and turn up again, then why can’t Keith?” she huffs, seemingly taking her frustrations on Lance’s hand and wrapping it tightly. 

Which at the very least, gives Lance something to focus on other than the conversation at hand because he admittedly is a bit lost. He’s warped amidst the feeling that he’d suffered at the medial of his childhood when he’d walk in on his parents arguing, and was just old enough to understand everything they were saying but not actually old enough to decipher the context or relevance. 

“Okay, but still…,” Hunk mutters, doing a horribly not-so-subtle job of nodding in Lance’s general direction as if they weren’t sitting next to each other, and Lance glances between the two of them to try to take a guess at what the _hell_ was going. 

“But _what_ ? Just admit you don’t want to talk about it because you think he’s _dead-_ seriously, have some faith, God.”

“I just don’t want anyone to get their hopes up. Realistically speaking, we have to be prepared for the worst case scenario,” Hunk corrects, strong arms crossing sternly and it’s definitely a sight to see. Hunk doesn’t very often pull his ‘Shiro stance’, as Lance has so graciously nicknamed it, with his arms folded heavily over his chest and his eyes just piercing enough to show that he’s not in the position to be pushed or challenged. 

Clearly, however, Pidge doesn’t get the memo on what Hunk’s body language is meant to display. Because instead of reading the room, she argues, “And _realistically_ Keith is one of the strongest people I know and he’s coming back. Right, Lance?” 

Like he’s caught amidst a very ungainly comedy sketch where the camera humorously pans to him at his expense, Hunk and Pidge look towards Lance with high expectancy, expressed by their upshot eyebrows and jaws clenched tightly like steel doors. 

Lance knows that his only option is to answer- if only to serve to save himself from the pregnant silent and to escape the eyes settled on his frame, but in truth he has no idea what the fuck is going on. 

“Um… who’s Keith?” 

\- -

There’s several things that Lance simply does not like. Cheetos that aren’t in puff form for one, or socks that are just short enough to slip off your heel and ride down into your shoe. 

But somewhere at the top of that list, like perhaps at number four or three (just under spiders, but high enough to be above people that let all of their food touch on their plate) is the major peeve of silence. 

It’s simple enough, in theory; some people can appreciate the quiet, whereas people like Lance felt the need to fill up that empty space. Half of the world could probably agree with him about gaps in dialogue being uncomfortable, in fact. Except it was a bit more than just uncomfortable- it was weighted and nerve wrenching. It made Lance sweat at times, or pinch at the pinnacle of his elbow or scratch at the back of his neck like his life depended on it. 

It was the reason why Lance had the habit of butting into things, physically or verbally, in the heat of heavy conversations or amidst unpleasant conferences. It was a force of habit, really, to cut into air that was heavy with things left unsaid. 

So when Pidge and Hunk stare at Lance oddly after he questions who this Keith character is, for several seconds and then a full minute or so, he coughs and averts his gaze. Even he doesn’t know how to lift the tension, and _that’s_ his specialty. But it’s just exceptionally hard when he’s trampled their attention so strongly that they’ve become complete mutes, and they’re staring at him like he’s growing a second head.

“Very funny Lance,” Pidge eventually settles, eyeing Hunk and then rolling her eyes at the red paladin. 

“I-I’m not joking,” he insists, frowning a bit. Yes he usually took up the role as comedic relief of their makeshift family, but after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours he wasn’t in the mood for much joking. Besides, _whoever_ this person that his friends were discussing seemed important to them. He wouldn’t joke about not being aware of someone’s existence during such an already strained discussion. 

“God, now he’s restarting the five stages of grief,” Pidge complains, moving from her seat on a stool next to Lance in the medbay to begin to store away the first aid kit she was using. 

“I’m not grieving,” Lance complains, crossing his arms but not having enough footing on the situation to be completely outright about the swimming that was going on in his head. 

“The first stage of grief is denial,” Pidge chimes, shoving the first aid kit into its designated cabinet.

And before Lance can even contend this, Hunk murmurs in agreement a quick, “She’s not wrong you know.” 

In which at that point, Lance sees that there was no getting through to his friends about the situation, and he makes the decision to resign. He was happy enough to be without the migraine inducing headache he suffered the day before, and for the bite he endured to no longer burn, so he assumed the best position he could take was to resign. Maybe with a little time a whole lot of bed rest, things would make more sense. In the meantime, Lance was just happy to follow his friends out of the medbay to see what Coran had prepared for dinner. 

Although, halfway out the door, Lance felt a strong hand on his shoulder and looked up to meet eyes with Hunk, who’d stopped in the doorway. “You’re alright, Lance?” he questioned, brown eyes as soulful and kind as ever, with a frown on his face that marked downwards ever so slightly. 

“Peachy,” Lance replies, and in the moment he means it. He feels about as right as rain- especially for someone who’d been bitten by a foreign animal the day before and had passed out because of it. And so what if he didn’t know what Hunk and Pidge were referring to? It’s not like he ever really knew what they’re truly talking about. So he was willing to shrug things off, giving Hunk a reassuring grin and a quick promise to take care of himself for the time being, and that’s that. 

Which is for the best, really, because there’s certainly much bigger fish to fry. 

Over the course of the next week or so, there seems to be an unsaid shift, and Lance wonders if he’s the only one who feels it. But he doesn’t have the guts to say it, and settles on letting that just be, because some things are simply better left unsaid. A lot of things, actually. 

For some strange reason, Shiro decides it’d be in the team’s best interest to increase their time in team training, which is fine for the most part; it makes sense that he’d want everyone staying sharp, and no one could blame him on that front. However, it started to become a bit weird when he was insistent on this with Hunk and Pidge, demanding that they set aside projects and upgrading, or anything really, to take to the training deck. It made for a lot of awkward looking around, and the words “What’s up with him?” being mouthed on more than one occasion, but the majority of the castleship’s members weren’t willing to cut Shiro’s demands at the base and dissect them, let alone abject them. There was, however, Allura who was always happy to give Shiro a piece of her mind. Because on the occasion that he made the mistake of belittling her personal undertakings with Lotor, she makes the choice to cut right back with words that were… better left unrepeated. Needless to say, there was very little training actually done that day. 

A little more necessary to say, Shiro seemed to lose interest in the additional drills and practice affair all together. Which isn’t to say he no longer enforced this; he did. However, once Allura made it abundantly clear that she’d, for the most part, do things on terms that she saw best fit, Shiro tended to find business elsewhere. 

“What’s the point of making us train for hours on end if he doesn’t even stick around to watch? I’ve got system reboots to go through,” Pidge grumbled one evening, after a particularly long simulation that left her sucking the living daylights out of her juice pouch in between complaints and bated breaths. 

“I suppose knowing you all are prepared for anything helps him sleep at night, Number Five,” Coran riddled off, already tapping away at his holopad to prepare tomorrow’s simulation. 

“Well if that’s the case shouldn’t he be training with us? I get he’s ‘The Champion’ and all,” Lance says, using air quotes on one hand, and using the other to dig through the fridge for the juice pouch that vaguely reminded him of pineapples. “but he’s a paladin, too. And like, something about this feels vaguely counterproductive. Like, aren’t you supposed to _rest_ to actually build muscle and all that junk?” 

There’s small murmurs of agreement that go around the lounge, but no one sets out to actually set Shiro in his place because, even though Lance noticed months ago that Shiro had been changing increasingly more since his disappearance and then reappearance, but it wasn’t like any of them could put gut feelings and out of character actions into words that were enough to put into the air. They were essentially grasping at straws, and straws don’t exactly help draw _conclusions._

So several empty pockets of time were spent training, and no one were willing to take the initiative to tell Shiro they didn’t like the new schedule or even ask what the hell he was off doing while half of the team was busting their butts on the deck. 

But it wasn’t all bad. These excruciatingly long days made Lance ridiculously tired, as to be expected. So after long hot showers and a face mask, and maybe even a cup of something close enough to tea, Lance was easily able to to pass out on his bed. Sleep came so easily to him, he couldn’t even remember why he had been struggling so much with sleep earlier that month. As quintants turned into weeks, he slowly grew into a more sleep schedule that left him feeling refreshed in the morning; well, ignoring his constantly aching muscles thanks to his leader’s sudden rampage. 

But otherwise, his sleep was something that was starting to come to him more and more easily at night, with his stuffed sharks tucked under his chin and between his elbows and the green-blue hue of the plastic stars on his ceiling kissing him goodnight with the gentle light they offered.

Except for the dreams. Every other night, there were dreams.

Lance didn’t think much of them at first- spurts and dabbles that came as sequences of life, awkward second person glances at himself under a fuzzy lense, bits and pieces of inaudible dialogue. But by the third dream, things had gotten much more clear and a bit more… strange. 

This particular dream, set in a field that felt vaguely familiar but not concrete enough to spark a name, carries Lance in first person glancing around his settings, but mostly at the pasty orange sky above him. There’s no clouds in the atmosphere, and the color of the sky is much too desaturated and pale to actually be something close to Earth’s sky, but it must remind dream-Lance of sunsets because he says as much out loud. And within a beat, there’s a body rolling over to settle above Lance’s laying down form, balanced just by a strong elbow and a determined face. A face that looks the most familiar out of everything in this fantasy, with a chiseled jaw, large gray eyes, and quirked nose framed by dark hair. 

“ _It reminds me of the desert_ ,” this person admits, and dream Lance stares directly into his eyes so easily that you’d think that was his home. 

“Do you miss it- the desert I mean… ,” dream-Lance whispers, seemingly shy about the question, and his dream partner (?) shrugs, eyes flitting away for a second. 

“ _I guess so_ ,” he surmises, pushing a lock of black hair behind his left ear. “ _But I missed you more_.”

After that, a gust of gentle wind runs past, causing the sleepy-voiced stranger’s hair to fly in wispy odd directions, and it’s enough to make everything feel a little more delicate. Like the moment was in the cusp of Lance’s hands rather than at the edge of his brain. 

“ _You’re so cheesy_ ,” this other version of Lance laughs, and he’s sure that the stranger in the dream says something along the lines of being lactose intolerant, but the ins and outs of what comes next are a bit hazy to remember by the morning. 

What he _does_ know, however, is that the dream creates an odd sensation to ride the entirety of his body when he rises out of bed. He takes an extra moment to slip on his lion slippers and brush his teeth because a part of him can’t help but pause, because, well, _what the hell_?

First of foremost, Lance wasn’t used to having dreams so vivid. They were usually just enough to make out, with just enough detail that they'll be something he’ll ponder over for a few minutes after waking up but not clear enough for him to remember by the end of the day. However, the image his mind managed to conjure up felt a little too real. Like he could feel the pink plants underneath his body that were a little softer than grass just along his fingertips in real time, and he could smell the stale air that reminded him of lint or his Abuelo’s old shack that he used for carpentry in the days following his retirement. 

It all felt a little too real; like a memory rather than something he made up on a whim, subconsciously or not. 

Second, it all felt so random; the topic of the dream, that is. Was it a result of touch starvation or something? Was his overdue time among the stars finally getting the best of him? It was hard to tell, and last he checked there weren’t manuals to decipher dreams as a soldier in space. 

So, instead of letting himself overthink things as per usual, he decides to shake the peculiar feeling that resides in his gut all through his daily morning routine and comes to the conclusion that it was just a fluke of his mind. Maybe not having his usual weekly sleepovers with the team since Lotor had joined the team was messing him up, or maybe it was over exhaustion from his new overwhelming workout schedule. Maybe it was nothing. It didn’t matter either way; it was just a one time thing. 

Except, it _wasn’t_ just a fluke or odd chance. Because the very next night, a new dream flooded Lance’s senses clear as day and feeling as real as the sun is bright. This dream made time feel slowed down, like there was nowhere else to be except under his dark-haired stranger’s hold, with their head on Lance’s chest as the pair lounge lazily on a royal blue beach- blue sand sticking to their skin, pink water lapping towards them along the tides’ shore, and a purple night sky waning and flickering between light and darkness against the moon’s reflections. 

“ _Do you think we’ll catch pneumonia if we don’t get up soon?”_ Lance asks in this dream, feeling the tickle of his wet skin and dripping hair from seemingly leaving the beach’s water rather soon. 

“ _It’d be worth it,”_ the foreigner sighs, equally wet sticking to Lance in odd places and shoving his face deeper into Lance’s neck like that’s the only plausible thing he could do under such circumstances. 

There’s a flurry of bodies carrying loud voices that come sometime later, arriving on the beach in sandals or flip flops or flower anklets that scuff or shift amongst the gaudy blue sand, but those moments and the characters they involve are skinny blurbs in comparison to the sight of him on the beach with this dreamscape person. 

And the nights only continue like this. The following evening he dreams of him and this handsome man walking through a marketplace and picking out gifts for one another, following a golden path and talking to pink or blue native shopkeepers with kind eyes but less than kind prices. Another night he sees them in the kitchen making cakes for what is said to be Pidge’s birthday, except they’ve made a competition out of it to see who can make the best cake. Somehow a rainbow of a variety of frosting and fruit purées end up on more surfaces in the kitchen and along their faces than on the actual desserts, and the dream ends with Hunk saying they should’ve let him do it himself in between sighs. 

The dreams just continue to come, easy as breathing and light as a feather rubbing against the back Lance’s consciousness. They’re intimate, involving soft touches and gentle gazes that hold like moments stuck in time or grains of sand in an hourglass that refuse to move. Every lilt in their voices is caked in something fond, even when sarcasm or teasing is involved, and it- to put it rather simply- is a lot more than Lance can take. 

So after one too many nights of this, with the dreams running into each other and him not even remembering how many nights it’s been since he hasn’t faced one of these strange visions, he runs to his pocket-sized edition voice of reason: the green paladin. 

“You know, just because Hunk isn’t around, doesn’t mean you have to be all-,” Pidge waves a hand in Lance’s general vicinity, nearly swatting him in the face from where he sits behind her, chin resting amongst the thicket of her unbrushed hair and eyes blinking furiously as he tries to guess what she’s doing as she types meticulously into her laptop. “up in my grill. I can barely think with you this close.” 

“Sorry,” Lance sighs, eyes darting elsewhere as he scoots his stool back a bit. It was true that Hunk wasn’t around- on another mission with Shiro, therefore technically giving Lance and Pidge the day off assuming the castle didn’t face any attacks anytime soon- but he wasn’t trying to be a nuisance or treat her as he would Hunk. Half of him was trying to work up the courage to ask her about what he’d originally entered her workshop for, and a slightly less logical side of him was hoping he could absorb her smarty-pants brain cells so that he could answer his own questions _himself._ “Um, can I ask you something?”

“If I say yes will you leave me alone?” she retorts, scrunching her face upwards in an attempt to adjust her glasses and Lance takes the liberty of fixing them for her. 

“Uh, I guess? I just… Do you think it’s possible that the bite I got from that weird animal thingy did something to me? Like, mentally?” What he _really_ wanted to do was ask if he was going crazy, but last he checked Pidge wasn’t actually licensed for anything and therefore couldn’t diagnose him even if she tried. And Lord knew she’d try if asked. So all he could do was beat around the bush and hope for the best.

Upon hearing this, Pidge pauses, hands caught in the air to hover over her laptop for a few ticks before she swiveled in her chair to glance at the former blue paladin curiously. 

“Why do you ask?” 

“Well, um, just wanted to know. I haven’t been feeling all that well and I thought maybe that had something to do with it?” Eyes averted from his friend’s face, he looks at the two bite marks indicating where the animal’s pincers had pierced his skin. The wound had mostly healed, inflammation settling for the most part, but the area was obvious enough by the two large spots on the back of his hand and the slightly bumpy skin around the area. 

“Haven’t been feeling well how?” She scrutinizes, squinting and crossing her wiry arms. 

“Um, I’ve just been seeing things at night… like…” He can’t help but hesitate, because admitting what he’s been seeing to someone outside of himself makes it real. And goddamnit, it’s embarrassing. Because what if it’s just his longing, gay ass heart? Wishing and praying on something that isn’t there, having him shifting every night to a reality that doesn’t exist. But then again, it was just Pidge. And as much as she liked to deny it, he knew she cared for him, and she wouldn’t make fun of him for something he couldn’t help. At least not anymore than he could handle. “Like of this person I don’t know. Vividly. Like they’re real and- I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it’s all in my head.”

Pidge is quiet for a second, pondering over this and Lance wonders if he should say more. He essentially gave her a very bare bones run down of what _could_ be nothing, but he can see the little calculations and knobs essentially turning behind her eyes, and he doesn’t exactly feel brave enough to disrupt her train of thought. 

“That’s… definitely weird. And this has been going on since we were on Farisia?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Lance answers with a shrug, and Pidge looks as though she’d like to punch him. 

“Okay, I’ll talk to Allura about it later to see if we can do some research on Farisian wildlife. Hopefully it’s just a minor toxin that gives you hallucinations that she can whip up an antidote for or something. If not, then maybe it’ll just go away on its own.” Pidge says all of this slowly, but her last sentence comes after a particular lull in words. “But, um, take it easy for the next few days alright? If you’re seeing things I wouldn’t want you getting hurt.” 

Lance looks up from his hands finally, but by then Pidge has already turned back around in her seat and goes back to making attentive taps and clicks into her keyboard. 

“Thanks, Pidgey,” he hums easily, going back to his original placement with his head on hers, hoping to subtly display his gratitude. 

“Yeah, whatever,” is the remark he receives in return, but he knows without looking that she’s fighting off a small smile. And this time she doesn’t swat him away.

\- -

Much to Lance’s exasperation, the dreams continue. He’s sure that dreams aren’t supposed to be this consistent- constantly amongst the same theme, with the exact same characters and seemingly never running out like the series _Grey’s Anatomy_ or every other _Lifetime_ trilogy. But spending afternoons with Pidge in the castle library, and at times Allura if she can make the time, for the next few days committing to research is enough of a comfort that he feels things are bearable enough. 

But just like every other time Lance thinks things are manageable, he’s thrown for a loop. Except this one is much more undeniable and it sends every member of the castle reeling. 

It’s not a full week since his talk with Pidge that the entire castle is called to the bridge by Coran, and everyone quickly manages to gather themself in time to see Coran answer the transmission signal the castle’s getting from a nearby cruiser. But once the signal is dispatched and the bridge’s main screen flickers to life with a video transmission alongside the call, it’s indicated by a collective of gasps and hanging jaws that nobody’s prepared for who’s on the other side. 

Dusky gray eyes hugging tight eye bags on pale, almost placid, skin that’s scratched and scruffy in several places, but just enough that the face Lance sees looks like he means business and is focused on things more important than the subtle facial hair on his face or the wounds that looked like could’ve been tended to more. It’s a face that’s a little sharper, a little more _real_ in all the ways that matter, but after seeing it in his head everyday for weeks, he’d recognize it anywhere. 

“ _Keith…_ ,” Pidge supplies in a bout of disbelief and surprise at just the right moment, when everything is still registering for Lance’s senses but it’s not exactly adding up. He knows she isn’t actually giving him the answer to the question he’s only asked in his mind- that she’s saying this to herself under her breath, only even able to be heard because as per usual he’s invading her personal space. But it adds a bit more necessary context, and he’s grateful. How Lance’s subconscious managed to conjure up so many dates and escapades with this particular person Lance has no idea, but it seems to make more sense that they weren’t all that subconscious. That this admittedly hot man was actually real and a part of his life in some way. 

How this person fit into his life Lance couldn’t say- he felt as though he were putting together puzzle pieces in a keyhole, essentially figuring things out but not the _right_ things that would actually get him anywhere. So he stands there, dumbfounded and mouth dry and knees feeling like jelly as it comes to him that some part of his dreams have come to life in the strangest way possible, and feels Pidge tug onto his hand. Lance assumes it’s because she needs anchoring, with this moment being odd for her as well. But in that instant he’s never been so damned grateful for the miniature pilot, because she’s just as much helping him grasp onto reality as he is helping her. Likely even more so. 

Eyes glued to the screen like macaroni to a preschooler’s arts and crafts project, Lance can’t fixate his attention anywhere but on those sullen gray eyes. Words come from the screen, the stranger’s lips moving quickly. _Keith’s_ lips. 

But actual vowels and consonants get jumbled in Lance’s brain, because he’s too focused on just- just trying to absorb the situation. And hoping, with a tiny bit of a prayer he saves for special occasions like birthday cake candles and shooting stars, that he’s not dreaming this time. That this guy, who’s held him so softly in his dreams, is a quarter of what he is when Lance sees him at night behind his eyelids. Or maybe not even that much. Maybe asking him to be anything, to Lance or to anyone, or to want him to act any particular way is more than Lance could truly hope for. All he knows, within no more than a couple ticks with his mind racing at speeds that compare to bullet trains, is that he wants. He wants, and he hungers, and he knows that feeling from the belly up. (And not just because he skipped breakfast.)

He just wants Keith to be real.

And in a moment’s time, he is. 

Just as quick as he came, Keith’s face disappears from the screen and Lance looks to Pidge. 

“What-,” Lance starts, voice hoarse and having to be cleared a few times. “What just happened?” 

“Keith is here,” Pidge mumbles, seemingly nearly as choked up as Lance was, a gentle smile daring to push through her features. 

And she means it, apparently. A majority of the crew march off to the guest ships’ hangar to greet their assumedly fallen soldier, dressed in black and purples and carrying himself heavier and more thoughtfully than Lance could have ever imagined. 

Lance watches it all with his own eyes, but it doesn’t at all feel real in the slightest. The dreams on the beach or in the field or in the kitchen felt more realistic than this because this? This was far too much. 

Keith comes out of a small cruiser that’s seen better days, boots first, then long legs covered in a thin black suit that stretches all the way up to a torso and then to a neck that’s scratched and cut in some places, but mostly covered by a mop of thick black hair. And then, there’s his face. A face that’s too familiar but with some new add-ons; like upgraded parts on something you already adore. And well… Lance shakes his head a few times because _what the actual everliving fuck?_

He could explain toxic swamp monsters that give you hallucinations of cute guys in your dreams; he’d encountered odder things in his time as a paladin. But nothing in any textbook or even in any Star Wars or Marvel movie had prepared him for this kind of plot twist so he can’t believe it. With ‘it’ of course being Keith. 

Lance furrows a pair of umber eyebrows, blinks with a matching set of dark eyelashes quickly, and looks for a clue as to what to do. He must be lucid dreaming, right? He thinks so until those familiar eyes, purpled in their gray, as large as they are tired, settle on him. 

And then it feels real. Then he feels his breath being swept, and he knows it all to be undeniable as he says with his whole chest, “Keith.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> That awkward moment when your dream guy comes to life... hate when that happens :/ 
> 
> Anyhow, that’s the end of the intro to this fic, hope you enjoyed! ^^  
> Feel free to tell me any thoughts in the comments, comments definitely motivate me to write more. Also I’m thinking of writing a Klance Valentine’s fic sometime soon so tell me if you have anything you’d like to see for that :o! I was thinking a simple ice skating date but with me who knows lol.  
> Also fun fact, for all the descriptions of the planets and dreams I tried to include colors from specific LGBT+ flags :”] (ie. Farisia is the aromantic flag, the beach dream entails colors from the bi flag.) See if you can guess the flags for the other dream descriptions hehe.  
> Anyways, happy Black History Month and Happy Valentine’s Month! Have a nice day and thank you for reading!


End file.
